subs. and verb. (common).—As subs. = hasty flight: also SKEDADDLING. As verb. = to scamper off; to scatter; to spill. For synomyns, see BUNK.
1861. New York Tribune [BARTLETT]. With the South-east clear and General Price retiring into Arkansas in the South-west, we may expect to witness such a grand SKEDADDLE of Secesh and its colored property as was never seen before.
1861. Missouri Democrat, Aug. No sooner did the traitors discover their approach than they SKEDADDLED, a phrase the Union boys up here apply to the good use the Seceshers make of their legs in time of danger.
1862. New York Tribune, 27 May, ‘War Correspondence.’ Rebel SKEDADDLING is the next thing on the programme.
1864. HOTTEN, The Slang Dictionary, 292. Lord Hill wrote [to The Times] to prove that it was excellent Scotch. The Americans only misapply the word … in Dumfries—‘to spill’—milkmaids … saying, ‘You are SKEDADDLING all that milk.’
1874. SIR S. W. BAKER, Ismailia, 211. Their noisy drums had ceased, and suddenly I perceived a general SKEDADDLE.
1877. The Atlantic Monthly, xl. Aug., 234. We used to live in Lancashire, and heard SKEDADDLE every day of our lives. It means to scatter, or drop in a scattering way.
1880. M. COLLINS, Thoughts in my Garden, i. 50. The burghers SKEDADDLED, and the Squire, thanks to his faint-hearted butler, had no chance of using his cavalry sword.
1890. Pall Mall Gazette, 17 Oct., 2, 1. One fine day it happens that two Irish leaders SKEDADDLE in a trawler to the Continent.
1898. N. GOULD, Landed at Last, vii. They pays regular. There’s no midnight SKEDADDLING about them.
1901. W. S. WALKER, In the Blood, 261. ’E’s a “goner,” buried in a fall of earth, blown up, killed, SKEDADDLED out o’ this camp.
1900. F. E. GRAINGER (‘Headon Hill’), Caged! xxxiv. And the bars, are they cut ready for a SKEDADDLE?
